


Fell Apart, Gotta Rise Up

by Molly_Hats



Category: DCU (Comics), Green Arrow (Comics), Teen Titans (Comics), Titans (Comics)
Genre: Angst, But he apologizes and takes responsibility, Dick Grayson is Batman, Dick Grayson is aptly named, Drug Use, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Rise of Arsenal Fix-It, Roy Harper is a jerk, drug overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 01:25:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13536705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Molly_Hats/pseuds/Molly_Hats
Summary: Roy falls apart after Lian’s death.  Donna tries to help him put himself back together.  They’re nowhere near perfect, but they’re trying.  A Rise of Arsenal Fix-It Fic





	Fell Apart, Gotta Rise Up

**Author's Note:**

> I love Richard Grayson...fine, I love Dick...as much as anybody else, but since at this point in canon he was kinda a jerk and he's not the focus of this piece, it can come off as not very Dick friendly.

Lian’s funeral was quiet, uneventful. After the service, Roy stood in silence, staring into the open grave as people filed away.  
  
Donna approached him and laid a hand on his shoulderblade, fingertips resting on his shoulder. “Roy, the Titans are all here for you.” Her hair waved in the slight breeze, tickling the back of his neck. He didn’t seem to respond. “I understand what you’re going through—“  
  
“No, Donna, you don’t.” Roy snapped. He turned on her, swiping her hand off of his shoulder with his arm. She took a tiny step backward. “You always made grief about everyone,” he said, jerking his arm towards the departing mourners without looking at them, “but there’s some that’s personal! Some you _can’t_ understand!” He jabbed his finger in her face as his voice rose. “Don’t try to explain my own pain to me, Donna, because whatever the f*** empathy you think you have with me, you don’t! When your son died, you weren’t even on earth! You didn’t care about him like I cared about Lian!”  
  
Donna stared at him for a long moment, face furious but stony. Then she slapped him lightly across the face, the sound of skin hitting skin echoing through the graveyard. Roy blinked, raising a hand to feel the red spot on his cheek, taking half a step back in spite of himself.  
  
“I know you’re upset. I know you’re grieving,” Donna said quietly, standing still and meeting Roy’s eyes. Her voice remained gentle, but he’d known her long enough to hear the rage and grief beneath it. “But don’t you _dare_ disrespect my son’s memory. If you want to talk, I’m here, but if you just need a punching bag, the Tower gym is open.” She paused, face softening the slightest bit as she resisted the urge to try to reach out to him again. “You’re better than this, Roy.”  
  
“You don’t know sh** about me anymore, Donna,” Roy growled, turning away and walking, his empty suit sleeve flapping in the breeze. “Maybe you never did.”  
  
Donna started after him, but Dinah caught her arm. “He needs to be alone right now,” Dinah said.  
Donna sadly watched his retreating back, not pulling out of Dinah’s grip. “What can I do?”  
  
Dinah shook her head. “I don’t know.”  
  
:::  
  
“Roy?” She brought cookies. She didn't know what to do, so she brought cookies. Everyone on the Titans relied on her, cast her as the Mom friend, the steady one, the girl on a pedestal. Everybody but Roy. She’d always appreciated that. But now he needed that girl and she didn't know how to be that for him.  
  
  
She knocked on the door of his temporary apartment. “Roy?”  
  
No answer. She knocked again, then pulled out the key Dinah gave her and let herself in, walking through the apartment with the tray of cookies extended like a shield. “Roy? It's me, Donna. I'm sorry to barge in but I---”  
  
She froze in the kitchen doorway. There in the middle of the floor lay Roy, breathing shallow and slow, his eyes wide, pupils tiny. “Oh, Hera, _Roy_ …”  
  
She raced over, sliding the tray onto the counter where it rattled to a stop against the tiled wall. She examined him. He didn't have the band or syringe--not heroin. She scanned the floor around him and saw an overturned bottle of pills. She scooped it up and saw that it was almost empty. “D*** it!”  
  
Roy’s eyes fluttered. “Donna?”  
  
“Yeah, Roy, I'm here, stay awake,” she said, scooping him up into a propped sitting position against the cabinets and holding his cheeks, slapping them periodically to keep him awake. “What did you do?”  
  
“Whasshit look like,” Roy slurred, stroking his prosthetic arm and looking around, disoriented. His head lolled.  
  
“How many did you take?” She asked urgently, forcing his head upright and eyes toward her with a firm hand on his cheek.  
  
“Uhhhhh…” his head nodded. She slapped his bluish hand in desperation, noting in terror that it was clammy and cold and _wrong_  
  
“Roy. Talk to me, please, stay awake. Tell me about Lian.” It was the first thing she thought of.  
  
Roy’s eyes popped open and he shook his head frantically, his limbs twitching slightly as if trying and failing to make themselves useful. “No! I don't want...I can't...Donna, please, I can't think about…” His chest heaved, his tears swallowing up his shallow breath, hands groping at the floor.  
  
“Okay, then just breathe with me. In. Out. In. Out. Midnite’s coming.”  
  
“Why washit me?”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I’ve done stupid sh** that shoulda killed me since I was a kid. But I’m here. And my girl…” He took a deep breath (or rather tried) as he forced the words through his lips, “Lian isn’t here. She's supposed to be everywhere. With the earth. But I can't feel her, Donna. I think...I can’t...I…” He clenched his fist and gasped.  
  
“When I died, could you feel me?”  
  
“Unh?”  
  
“Could you feel me. When I died.”  
  
“I...no…but you're…”  
  
“Roy, feelings are a terrible way of determining the truth.”  
  
Roy just sobbed without tears. “I miss her.” He punched the floor, his expression turning angry, all that rage and nothing to do with it, pathetic and without good words for his feelings, trite and small and wrong.  
  
“It’ll be okay, breathe,” Donna said. “In. Out. In. Out.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” gasp, “about what I said at the—“  
  
“Shhhhh,” Donna said. “Just breathe. Just live, okay? So you can apologize later.”  
  
“D-deal.”  
  
A handful of heroes showed up eventually, carrying him away and promising to take care of him, asking her about his symptoms and how long he’d shown them. She answered their questions as best she could and waited for them all to leave before stumbling back inside. She spread her hands apart on the kitchen table and bowed her head, breathing hard, letting the emotions she’d held at bay crash over her. Before she got very far, though, she stiffened. “I know you’re over there, Dick. There aren’t many shadows to hide in at 3 pm.”  
  
Batman stepped into the dining room from his place outside the door.  
  
“Is that like,” Donna heaved, her chest trying to breathe with crying in mind, “in your contract when you become Batman?”  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
“Is Roy going to be okay?” Donna asked.  
  
“I asked you first.”  
  
“And,” Donna sniffed, “I’m older than you.”  
  
“They think he’ll pull through.”  
  
“And then what?”  
  
“You said you’d tell me if you were alright.”  
  
Donna slammed her palm down on the table impatiently, the wood splintering under the force. She stared at it, startled. “I’m fine. _Roy_.”  
  
“Uh-huh,” Dick said sarcastically. “They have a facility for him. He’ll get the help he needs.”  
  
Donna met his eyes.  
  
“Donna, I’m telling the truth. We'll do everything we can for him. I promise, Donna, he’s my friend too.”  
  
Donna nodded, eyes lowering the the remains of the table. “Thank you, but please...just go. I need to be alone.”  
  
She didn’t watch him leave. She curled up in a ball in the kitchen corner, arms on her knees and face to the ceiling. She released her legs quickly to give her chest space to expand and shove air into her waiting lungs.  
  
:::  
  
“You just _left_ him there? What were you thinking, Dick?!”  
  
“It's the only place he could stay, Donna.”  
  
“You left him alone in a run down facility and you wonder when he breaks out and gets revenge? You're as bad as Bruce.”  
  
“Donna, you're too close--”  
  
“ _D*** right_ I’m close! He's my friend! _Our_ friend—or so you said when you told me he'd be okay, that you’d handle it! I let you take him because I _trust_ you, Dick! What happened to you?!” She turned away, uncrossed her arms so they swung with her stride, and moved to leave the room, putting weight on her heels first so her steps rang through the quiet—dignified stomping.  
  
“Donna, where are you going?”  
  
“To find my friend,” she said. “Don't wait up, _Batman_. We don't need you.”  
  
“Donna!”  
  
She ignored him.  
  
:::  
  
She touched down in front of where Roy and Lian’s house had been, her silver boots tapping on the ground. The wreck was more a pile of scrap wood than anything resembling a structure anymore.  
  
“Roy?” She saw a bit of red and moved carefully toward it.  
  
An arrow shot out of the debris, and Donna deftly caught it in one hand. Wary, she stuck the arrow to one of her newly magnetized bracelets and held up the other defensively. “Roy, it's me, Donna.”  
  
“You’re here to take me back there?”  
  
Donna followed his voice. “No.”  
  
“If you’re here to kill me, I’ll warn you, Jade already tried,” Roy said. “If you’re here to screw me while I’m vulnerable, she tried that too.”  
  
“You know me better than that,” Donna said. “I’m not here to drag you anywhere, and I’m not here to take advantage of you. I’m here to help my friend. I got a few punching bags back at the gym with your name on them.”  
  
“I'd guess you gave them quite a beating after how I treated you at the funeral.”  
  
“I meant it as they're reserved. You need to get out your aggression somehow.”  
  
“Not interested.”  
  
Donna followed his voice, finding him hidden behind the wreckage of a cabinet. His mask was broken, and his long, messy hair hung down over his eyes. His head tilted listlessly, his eyes staring through the broken screen door at the cloudy sky above. He held his bow in his trembling good hand, the prosthetic several feet away where he’d apparently flung it.  
  
“Looks like you’ve been finding a way to get out your aggression the old fashioned way,” she commented.  
  
Roy glared at her through his bangs without moving his head. “What do you _want_ , Donna?”  
  
“What do _you need_ , Roy?” Donna asked, voice sharp but kind. She knelt down in the splintery wreckage. “What do you need? I’m not going to let you destroy yourself. You’re not alone,” she said, extending a hand like she would to a shy dog, letting it hover a few inches from his arm, “we’ve all been here—“  
  
“Dammit, Donna, you always make it about everyone!” Roy interrupted, knocking her hand away. “It’s...it’s not like that. It’s personal, it’s _me_ ,” he gripped and relaxed his hand on the bow rhythmically, “she was mine and she...it’s not selfish it’s...nobody else knows…Nobody else _can_ know.” he angrily wiped his eyes around the torn mask. He sniffled for a moment as Donna tactfully studied the wreckage. Finally he whispered, “I’m her father. I’m her only father, she’s my only daughter, and I know there’s fathers who’ve lost daughters before but this isn’t like them because it isn’t them.” He ran a hand through his hair harshly, pulling out a few stubbornly knotted strands. “I can’t...Dammit!” He yelled, staring at the sky to avoid looking at Donna, head tipped back.  
  
After a few moments, with a string of Navajo, he curled his legs in and buried his face in them, hiding his tears, arm wrapped around his knees.  
  
Tentatively, Donna placed a hand on his back. He’d ditched the quiver, and she could barely feel the warm skin underneath his uniform as she ran her hand up and down his back.  
  
“I never got to say I was sorry for what I said at the funeral,” Roy finally said.  
  
“You weren’t in your right mind.”  
  
“No, I was angry. I wanted to hurt you.”  
  
Donna leaned in, hair brushing his arm, her forehead almost touching his temple, her arm on his back sliding to meet the stump of his shoulder. “It was still true, Roy. I wasn’t there when Robert died.”  
  
“You loved him,” Roy said. “It was cruel to say. It wasn’t the full truth.”  
  
“It’s still truth. Diana would verify, you were there for Lian like I never was for Robbie,” Donna murmured, angry at herself for the lump rising in her own throat, for the grief she thought she’d dealt with. “Lian died knowing you loved her. She _lived_ knowing you loved her and would do _anything_ for her.” Donna took his hand. “You’re a good dad, Roy.”  
  
“Not anymore.”  
  
“I never was.”  
  
“Donna, that’s not fair to yourself.”  
  
“You don’t need to spare my feelings,” Donna said.  
  
“No, I mean it. For one thing, dads are guys. Not your fault you can’t be a dad.”  
  
Donna blinked and leaned back to properly see Roy’s eyes. His eyebrows rose hopefully. Donna laughed at his expression and lunged forward, kissing him on the cheek and wrapping her other arm around him  
  
“All this for a terrible joke?” Roy asked in bewilderment, the start of a smile creeping onto his face.  
  
“Speedy, if bad jokes turned me off I’d have found a different career.”  
  
“Fair enough. Can you give me a hand?”  
  
Donna lean-crawled to reach his prosthetic arm, and handed it to him. “You always did like prop comedy.”  
  
“Look, when you’re a guy with a bow and arrow on a team of demigods, props are all you’ve got,” Roy said, reattaching it.  
  
He stood up, and Donna did too. They stood in awkward silence for a few moments, the grief still hanging between them, the old jokes trying to reach through and flailing.  
  
Donna took the arrow from her gauntlet and handed it to him. “If you need anything, Harper, I’m here.”  
  
“Thanks, Wonderchick,” Roy said, sliding the arrow into his quiver. “I...There’s something. I was gonna do it alone but...maybe I should be with someone.”  
  
  
“Anything.”  
  
:::  
  
Autumn was starting, the wind stinging Roy’s face and carrying the smell of burning leaves from the nearby town. Roy made his way down the rows purposefully, leaves crushing underfoot, Donna following.  
  
Finally, he froze before the familiar headstone and crouched down. Breathed in, breathed out, like when he taught her to shoot, breathe in breathe out and don’t think about anything but where the target is, where it will be, that focus. He reached out a hand and shivered as his fingers first touched the stone, as if he was touching Death incarnate instead of a wind-cooled slab of granite. He ran his trembling fingers along the words of the tombstone.  
  
Donna stood at a distance, feeling like a trespasser and unsure what to do, just knowing she shouldn’t try to talk.  
  
Roy began to sob. “Don’t leave,” Roy whispered. “Please don’t leave me alone.”  
  
She wasn’t sure if he was talking to her or the grave, so she slowly moved to stand beside him, looking down at the words on the grave, at the look on his face, tears running down her own cheeks.  
  
“Do...do you think she suffered?” he finally asked. “When she died? Do you think that she scr-“ his voice gave out, and Donna saw the anger at himself on his face as he plunged on, “screamed for me? If she died quickly or was trapped under...trapped in there for…”  
  
Donna placed a hand on his shoulder and crouched to be level with him. “Stop.”  
  
“Donna, I don’t want you to coddle me, I—“  
  
“ _No,_ Roy, listen. Don’t beat yourself up, either. This isn’t productive, and I know how terrible this is to say, but _Lian wouldn’t want this_. There’s nothing to be gained from it, Roy. Please. I’ve...I’ve been in a similar place. Not the same,” she caught herself, “but similar, and your self doubt doesn’t help anybody, least of all you.” She touched his cheek with the back of her hand, her short fingernails barely brushing across his face, wiping some of the tears away.  
  
“Donna…”  
  
She looked into his eyes. “What?”  
  
He looked away. “Thanks.” He stood, and Donna followed suit.  
  
“Goodbye, Lian,” he said to the tombstone. “I’ll visit, I promise. But I think…” He shook his head, a tiny, sad smile on his face as he trailed off. “I love you,” he said instead. He turned and met Donna’s eyes. “Thank you.” He repeated.  
  
Donna nodded and hastily swiped at her own cheeks. “You’re welcome, Roy. I’m here for you.”  
  
Roy smiled, closed-mouthed and small but genuine. “Yeah. Yeah, you are.”

**Author's Note:**

> Oh, hey, my passion for fix it fic FINALLY gets an actual posted work. Wow. The Hamilton reference title made more sense at one point—I had to cut some more quote headers for better flow. These two have such different ways of dealing with grief. it’s really fascinating and makes a wonderful dynamic. Donna is so compassionate and empathetic that she sometimes, rather paradoxically, can seem dismissive when she really can’t empathize but thinks she can. Roy’s used to everybody leaving and having to do everything on his own, badly. Roy doesn’t sugar coat, he doesn’t want to be coddled, he wants to surround himself with people who will be brutally honest about his faults. I really wanted to play with that...although on another level, I kinda just wanted to fix the colossal idiocy of the superheroes in RoA. My only real worry with this was execution, tbh, but it doesn’t take much to be better than the canon version.


End file.
